Yes We Can and Yes We Did!!

written by Kevin Walker

photo by: Wendy Piersall

OK, we are just now recovering from our incessant celebration since Tuesday night!! What a remarkable night Tuesday was. We can kind of think now, so here are a few thoughts:

The Barack Obama campaign has been the best business school case study EVER--of how to market a product and convince people to "buy." The campaign was also a great case study in the use of new media to connect to people and galvanize them around a cause. I will forever remember the 3 a.m. text message I received announcing that Obama chose Joe Biden as his VP running mate.

The Obama campaign provided all of us with a textbook example of mastering the online/offline worlds of millennials. Their use of web video, Youtube, emails after key campaign moments, and texting, was done in the organic way that most Gen Y'ers use them.

One of the most brilliant decisions the Obama team made was hiring the co-founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes. With his innate knowledge of the dynamics of online social networks they were able to effectively use the communication tools that young people use on a day-to-day basis. They used the web as a mobilizing force to organize grassroots activity organizing 150,000 meetings via the internet over the 21 months of the campaign. They also perfected the pioneering work of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign in the use of the internet as a fundraising mechanism. I am sure that ALL marketers will be analyzing the success of the Obama campaign in the use of new media.

Consistency in your brand and in your marketing strategy means a lot! Even when things were not looking too good after the McCain team's pick of Sarah Palin, the Obama campaign stuck to their strategy and chose to focus on their issues and not the opposing team's personalities. The Obama campaign fully understood what people were looking for during these difficult times.

Knowing the mindset of your targeted consumer is perhaps one of the greatest tenets that the Obama campaign exploited. They fully understood that the majority of Americans were ready for a change so they branded the whole campaign around CHANGE. As most of us knew when McCain adopted the Change mantra, it was disingenuous to say the least. We could go on and on about how brilliantly Obama demonstrated how well they understood the mindset of the people.

As Russell Simmons has so famously said, "Do You!" Obama definitely did himself! He was calm, funny, corny, confident, serious, and he consistently reached out to ALL Americans, not just his base. Even when folks like me wanted him to get rougher with the opposing team, he remained true to himself.

Obama is the right brand for America in a time when America has dramatically slipped in global stature. Being a global citizen benefited Obama greatly in his outlook and ability to connect with all people. I will go out on a limb and say that being a global citizen and being bi-racial will make Obama one of the greatest statesmen that the world has ever seen.

Finally, the most striking thing about Tuesday night's selection of the new American President was that it was a total validation of Richard Florida's theories about The Rise of the Creative Class (please read his book by the same name). Obama is a Creative Class President from a Creative Class city, Chicago! Did you see how fantastic downtown Chicago looked as a background for the acceptance speech?!

Many states that McCain won-the so-called Red States-did not have Creative Class cities. Texas with Austin was the exception but that is it! Also, many of the states that McCain won were southern and Great Plains states with homogenous populations, many rural areas, and declining populations (West Virginia, Kentucky, North Dakota, Alabama, etc).
The Blue States, on the other hand, were states with large populations of young people, heavy concentrations of universities, and very diverse populations.

Also, those who supported Obama were urban AND suburban educated whites, Hispanics, Asians, and African Americans. So, Obama is a President for the urban, young, globally conscious,enlightened, diverse and progressive people-THE REAL AMERICA. This is the CultureLab demographic! Obama is symbolic of what our Agency, CultureLab, represents: the reality of the diverse New America/New World that we live in. Like Obama is the right President for this new era, we are the right Agency for Clients who want to connect better to young, technologically savvy, globally conscious, and multicultural people in this new era.

Please also see: Youth Vote Record Turnout

The Old Agency Model Is Dead!

This past week, CultureLab immersed itself in the ever changing world of marketing and advertising in the Digital Age. From Toronto to Austin to LA, we traveled all over North America to find out what is really happening. There are a few important topics that we constantly heard relative to reaching Gen Y’ers. Here is what we learned:

1. Engagement-Advertising is no longer screaming down from the mountaintop with whatever message you want to communicate. Smart marketers know it is important to enlist the consumers’ help in spreading your message. Marketers who will win with Gen Y’ers will be those who encourage brand interactivity and enlist the help of the consumer to spread the word to their peers.
2. Hispanic Youth – 85% of Hispanic youth in the US were born in the US. They are multicultural in their sensibility and gravitate to English speaking media. This is the group that will have the most clout in terms of population size and cultural influence
3. Google vs. Microsoft-It is quite mind boggling to witness this epic battle of who will control advertising distribution. In the Old Media model, it was broadcast networks who controlled advertising distribution but now it is Google and Microsoft who are absolutely duking it out for control. We saw presentations by both Microsoft and Google and it became very clear to us that the stakes are high for both because this is where the advertising play really is from this point on. With Google buying Double Click and Microsoft buying Yahoo, the saga will continue.
4. Mobile Marketing- Here is another element that smart advertisers will add to the marketing mix. It was generally agreed that we are in the very Dark Ages of mobile marketing as marketers have to deal with a “broken eco-system”. The American carrier system is a HUGE hindrance to successful mobile marketing. Right now, SMS messaging is the stalwart tactic being used in Mobile.
5. R.I.P. to the Music Industry and Newspaper Industry- The expectation of free and rampant use of Bit Torrent, Limewire and other downloadable means has put the record industry in a serious pickle. It was announced at the Millennials conference in Toronto that 48% of teens in 2007 DID NOT buy a CD. That is a trend and is only going to get worse. Bad news is that the music industry is structured for CD sales. WOW! The same goes for the newspaper industry. Young people are into pop culture news and have very short attention spans. Newspapers are not an integral part of their daily lifestyle.

The advertising world is changing and changing fast. We pride ourselves as an Agency that stays relevant because we love monitoring these changes. Digital is the word and those who don’t understand this evolving world will be left behind.